Frontier undaunted by tower closing at Trenton-Mercer Airport

Air travel into and out of the Trenton-Mercer Airport in Ewing just got a little bit more dangerous, thanks to the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to shut down the control tower .

“This news causes us great concern, and the implications are many, from the safety of our airspace to the possible detrimental impact to our economy that has only recently begun to see signs of recovery,” said a very frustrated Brian Hughes, Mercer County executive. “Everyone thinks the sequester doesn’t hurt anyone, but it hurts us here in Mercer.”

In recent days, state and local government representatives have been working hard to lobby Washington bureaucrats to keep the “eye in the sky” open, despite looming federal budget cuts. At a press conference, held more than a week ago, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno seemed confident that legislators would work to keep the tower open despite the sequester, or partial shut down of the government, which landed the facility on a list to be closed in early April.

“Certainly if safety becomes an issue, everyone has a stake in that and the state will have a seat at the table,” said Guadagno.

At the press conference, the state awarded a $2.5 million dollar grant to update and renovate the airport’s taxiways. When asked, a representative from the state Department of Transportation said the funding for the grant cannot be relocated to keep the tower open nor are there any current grants available which can be used to continue funding to the tower.

“We estimate it costs about $60,000 a month to keep the tower opened, and that is $60,000 the county does not have,” said Hughes. “This is a regional airport and about 75 percent of the people who use the airport do not live in Mercer County. It is not fair to expect our taxpayers to pick up the cost of keeping the tower open.”

Ceasing operations at the control tower, which was contracted out by the FAA to Kansas based service provider Midwest Air Traffic Control, does not translate into ceasing operations at the airport. The tower is currently manned from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, with flights operating outside those time frames, according to the Mercer County Executive’s office.

“We are all kind of shocked here and this is really going to create a lot of safety issues in Trenton,” said Jim Pate Air Traffic Manager at the Trenton Mercer Airport.

“I thought we put a good case out, and God knows we had a lot of support from local government and state government. It is a great facility. It is going to be a big loss for the county.”

As a way to revive the economic viability of the airport, and its surrounding townships, Frontier began service out of the Ewing airport in mid-November 2012. The county successfully convinced Frontier Airlines to officially relocate their East Coast operations from the Philadelphia International Airport to the region in January 2013.

According to the budget airlines, closing operations at the tower is a disappointment, but will not disrupt their plans to expand their current flight schedule into and out of the airport. Beginning April 8, a day after the airport tower is scheduled to close, the airlines will increase departures to seven days a week bringing the total number of destinations the carrier flies to 10. New cities will include service to Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit and Raleigh-Durham.

“We operate at other airports that do not have a tower,” said Kate O’Malley, manager of corporate communications for Frontier Airlines. “In poor weather it does increase the chances that the pilot will have to divert to another airport with a tower.

The FAA did decrease the initial number of federally contracted towers , which were set to close, from nearly 200 to 149, as part of the agency’s sequestration implementation.

The agency has made the decision to keep 24 federal contract towers open that had been previously proposed for closure because doing so would have a negative impact on the national interest, according to a statement released on Friday.

An additional 16 federal contract towers under the “cost-share” program will see a 5 percent loss to their budget, but remain open because Congressional statute sets aside funds every fiscal year for these towers.

“When I look at some of the airports they kept open, like the private jet airport Opa-Locka Executive in Miami Beach, they’ve got to be kidding,” said Hughes. “They kept it open so hip hop stars and celebrities can fly in and out of Miami and they close Mercer?”